China is host to almost half of the world's malware infected Web sites

According to a report released Monday by antivirus company Sophos, China--including Hong Kong--hosted 44.8 percent of the world's infected sites in August 2007. The United States ranked a distant second, hosting 20.8 percent of Web sites that contain malicious code.

The number of infected Web pages has also grown. Sophos said that it detected an average of 5,000 new infected pages each day in the month of August.